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Next: Arrays of pointers Up: Fortran 90 Tutorial: Previous: Pointer arguments

Pointer functions

Function results may also have the POINTER attribute; this is useful if the result size depends on calculations performed in the function, as in 

     USE data_handler
     REAL x(100)
     REAL, POINTER :: y(:)
     :
     y => compact(x)
where the module data_handler contains 

     FUNCTION compact(x)
        REAL, POINTER :: compact(:)
        REAL x(:)
  ! A procedure to remove duplicates from the array x
        INTEGER n
        :              ! Find the number of distinct values, n
        ALLOCATE(compact(n))
        :              ! Copy the distinct values into compact
     END FUNCTION compact
The result can be used in an expression (but must be associated with a defined target).


Janne Saarela
Tue May 16 13:43:26 METDST 1995